Boost converters are used in a wide variety of applications, such as in motor drives and in interfaces for solar and wind power generators. Many such applications require boosting of an input voltage to a much higher voltage. For example, a solar application may require boosting of a relatively low voltage produced by a solar string to a much higher voltage required for an inverter that is coupled to the power grid.
Various converter configurations have been developed to provide such high levels of boost. These converter arrangements include cascaded boost circuits that include multiple boost stages, as well as coupled inductor, interleaved and multi-level boost converter arrangements. Such conventional boosts converters may suffer reduced efficiency due to excessive switching losses and/or may stress transistors and other components of the circuits.